


segments

by Ias



Series: orange grove [3]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Domestic, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Slice of Life, haha get it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-07 05:24:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15901755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: The days are warm and slow, and by Christ, they haveearnedthis.[a series of short vignettes set within the orange grove verse.]





	1. tickle

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the title is a pun. No, I regret nothing. This collection will feature mostly pure tooth-rotting fluff, but with some letters and some pwp thrown in for good measure. Rating to be updated as needed.

It starts in bed.

Francis wakes up first, as is his custom. So early in the morning and so late in the year, the air is cool enough to justify the blanket thrown over him and James both—though _both_ is perhaps a generous adjective, because James has wrestled the coverlet over to his side of the bed for seemingly no purpose but to wad it against the wall. Accordingly, Francis has pressed up against the warm, soft plane of James’s back while they slept. Perhaps that was James’s plan all along.

Francis blinks against the thicket of James’s hair, breathing in his smell. Soon, Francis will rise to get the hot water going, and the scream of the kettle will thus entice James to come shuffling out into the land of the living, to slump at the kitchen table in front of the tea Francis has made how he likes. They’ll share a piece of the bread that James baked the night before.

Somehow, at a certain point, this unlikely miracle became routine.

But he can only lie around bed basking in the present moment for so long before the chill in his feet becomes impossible to ignore. Rather than try and wrestle the blankets back, Francis presses his toes to the back of James’s calves, and smiles against his hair as the other man mumbles a complaint. Francis waits long enough that James stills, and then drags his cold toes further up his leg.

This time, James _twitches_.

“Good morning,” Francis says, pushing James’s hair aside to nose at the back of his neck.

“Francis,” James grumbles against the pillows; followed by a string of words within which Francis can only make out the phrase _your damn feet_.

“What about them?” Francis edges his feet into the soft warmth behind James’s knees. James groans. Francis grins.

“ _Cold_ ,” James grits out, but he doesn’t pull away.

“That’s what you get for stealing the blankets.”

“I wasn’t _awake_.” 

Francis wiggles his toes, which are finally getting warm. James twitches again. “Don’t _do_ that, Francis.”

“Why not?” He does so again.

“Because it— _ah-Christ_ —”

Now James does try to pull away. Francis presses his feet forward, chasing the warmth, and this time when his toes burrow behind James’s knees James jerks away with a noise that Francis realizes, after a moment, is a bitten-off laugh.

Wearing an expression of incredulity, Francis props himself up on an elbow to stare at James’s face. “James,” he says slowly, “are you _ticklish_?”

James rolls over to glare at him, conveniently shielding the backs of his legs. “I most certainly am not. And you’d best— _Francis!”_

Francis falls on him without hesitation or mercy, his fingers scrabbling at James’s ribs, under his arms, across his stomach; and James cannot snatch his wrists fast enough before he is caught, laughing and swearing and trying to squirm beneath the cover of the blankets he’s hoarded, Francis cackling like a madman as he follows, until James manages to toss the blankets over Francis’s head and tackle him to the bed, and then clamber over him to freedom as Francis swipes uselessly at his heels, laughing too hard to pursue him.

*

The next morning, as James sits at the table and waits for his tea to cool, Francis steps up behind him with a leather tie and gathers James’s hair at the back of his neck. By now, his fingers are practiced as he binds it into a short tail. James hums in the back of his throat, and leans his head into the touch.

When Francis is finished, he lets his fingers rest against James’s scalp, rubbing gently—and then they trail down to the back of his neck, to tickle the skin he’s exposed.

James jolts, and then leans back to smack his hand away. “Leave off, Francis,” he says, his voice sour. But he can’t hide the grin creeping across his features, and his hand lingers against Francis’s a moment longer before finally falling away.  


	2. disagreement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here is a highly frivolous and excessively tardy offering in this series; the next will likely be something nsfw, because it's been that kind of month

“Not happening, James.”

“Francis, you haven’t even heard me out—”

“I don’t need to hear your arguments to know it’s a bloody bad idea.”

In the cottage doorway, James crosses his arms. The sluggish afternoon breeze inches through the doorway like lukewarm treacle, and about half as refreshing. As soon as he opened the door mere moments ago with that damned gleam in his eyes, Francis had known there was _something_ coming. It had been James’s turn to make the trip to town; plenty of time, Francis had found, for the impossible man to get himself into trouble. His very _look_ is troublesome. Even when emptied, pushing the handcart back up the long dirt road from the seaside town where they sold their oranges was the work of a couple hours, and enough to leave a thin film of sweat in the v of skin revealed by James’s open collar; on the sides of his neck, where the light touches them.

“It’s a perfectly reasonable idea,” James continues blithely, no doubt aware that Francis’s eyes have not limited themselves to the vicinity of his face. “You’re merely being cantankerous.”

“ _Cantankerous_?” Francis tosses his napkin onto the table and leans back in his chair. His right eyebrow creeps steadily upward. “James, what in God’s name do you intend to do with a bloody _goat?”_

James tilts his head, biting back a smile as he raises an idle hand. “They’re useful animals. You can get milk, and cheese, and there’s plenty for it to eat—”

“I grew up on a farm, James, you needn’t lecture. I’m asking what _you_ want with the thing.”

Slowly, James ambles over to the table to lean against its edge near where Francis is sitting, inspecting Francis’s half-eaten lunch with interest. “We could sell the cheese with our oranges when we go into town. And we’ve lots of space here. We could have more animals than that, eventually. Perhaps a cow, some dogs—”

“Leave off my toast, James, you had yours earlier.” Francis slaps his insistent fingers from his plate and ignores James’s noise of complaint. “You know absolutely nothing about animal husbandry.”

“You could teach me.” Somehow in the process of swatting James’s hand away, their fingers have ended up entangled. The pressure of James’s thumb tracing the vein on the back of Francis’s hand is so baldly and deviously persuasive that Francis would almost comment on the motion, had he been willing to risk James ceasing it. “I like it here, Francis. I want to build something.”

Francis stares at their fingers for a while even after he’s made up his mind. The long-suffering sigh he heaves is purely to prevent James from suspecting how wholly Francis is bent to his whims. “You can start by building it a pen,” Francis grumbles, fooling absolutely no one. “ _One_ goat,” he says, as James’s smile grows. “Next time we’re due to go to town we can take a look at the market—”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” James says cheerily, patting Francis’s hand one last time as he pushes himself off from the table, swiping the last of Francis’s toast as he goes. “She’s outside now.”

“ _She_ — _?_ Oh, for Christ's sakes, James—” Francis glares at his back as James, laughing, beckons him out the door. For a moment Francis merely slumps in his chair, pondering with as much irritability as he can muster on how the mystery of how he came to love such a tiresome and insufferable character.

Then he gets up, shaking his head, and follows James into the heat of the garden to make sure the damn goat hasn’t yet eaten its way through his tomato plants.  


	3. Chapter 3

When Francis looks up from his book in the early hours of the evening, James is leaning against the bedroom doorframe. Watching him, with a smile.

Francis removes his reading glasses (delicate things James had happened across in the market, and presented to Francis as a birthday gift) and closes his book, setting both on the bedside table beside him. The night air is pleasantly cool; he has yet to get under the blankets. His legs stretch out before him, beneath his nightshirt and drawers. He folds his hands over his stomach and looks up as mildly as if he doesn’t recognize the expression on James’s face, or understand what it implies.

“Something you need, James?”

Wordlessly James pushes off from the doorframe and crosses the room to the bed. Francis starts to shift over, giving him room; but James’s hands on both his knees stop him short.

“Just one thing,” James says, his eyes glinting in the lamplight. His hair is bound back at the base of his neck, the strands of grey catching the light like spun silver. The pressure on Francis’s knees tightens, and then James slowly levers them apart.

Goosebumps utterly unrelated to the nighttime chill spring up on the backs of Francis’s arms as James climbs onto the bed between his spread legs, his hands slowly dragging up over the fabric of Francis’s drawers until they reach the hem of his nightshirt—and push it up. His fingertips tease over Francis’s stomach, briefly—before sliding back down to the hem of his drawers, and tugging them down to his knees.

“What brought this on?” Francis says, only barely winning the struggle to keep his voice unaffected. This time when James’s hands repeat their journey from knee to hip, they slide over warm, bare skin. Francis can feel the callouses on his palms, the reach of his long, slender fingers. James’s eyes wander over him like a second pair of hands, his gaze enough to be felt. Eventually his fingers settle not at Francis’s cock, half-hard between his spread legs, but rather on his face.

“Nothing,” James says. “I merely wanted you.”

The words take the breath from Francis’s lungs before James even lowers his head. The warm wetness of James’s mouth against the tip of his cock is enough to make any attempt at remaining collected a thing of the forgotten past. But James does not take it into his mouth—rather lavishes it with damp, open kisses and flicks of his tongue that make Francis shift against the sheets, needing more, until James has kissed his way down to the softness of his hip, and marks it with a soft nip.

“I want you all the time,” James murmurs against the heat of his flesh, and Francis almost laughs—almost says that James deserves better than an old man who can barely keep pace with his physical desires. But of course, it isn’t physical desire that James speaks of now. There are deeper kinds of wants. Akin almost to the hunger they felt on the ice, ever-present and all-consuming. And yet here, they both will always have their fill.

James’s mouth closes over Francis’s cock in earnest, and his eyes almost drift shut. His fingers find the cord in James’s hair, and release it; gently he tugs James’s hair out of its knot as his mouth slides up and down Francis’s length. Francis’s breaths are far between, and sharp when they come. He winds James’s long hair around his fingers, lets it slide through his grip before gathering it up again. James’s other hand rests on his thigh, his thumb pressing insistently to the tender flesh like a brand.

It’s almost tempting to ask James to stop. For in this moment there is so much more Francis wants from James’s mouth—wants to hear James say how he wants him, how _much_ he wants him; wants those words to spill out of him like the rush of a tide. He wants James’s mouth on his. He wants James’s kisses more than food or sleep.  

But then James’s tongue drags over the head of his cock once more, and with a sharp _oh_ Francis comes without even having realized how close he was. In the thick haze of pleasure that settles over him after, Francis can feel James swallow. And then at long last James pulls off him, resting his head against the juncture of Francis’s thigh for long enough to catch his breath, before clambering up to settle himself atop Francis’s body, their legs interlaced.

“My hair is going to be a fright,” James mumbles into his shoulder.

With a breathless chuckle Francis slides his fingers back into it, and uses it as a lever to turn James’s face to his.  “I’ll brush it for you.”

“You’ll make it worse.”

“Ungrateful.”

“Oh, perpetually.”

With a slow smile that Francis can feel in his very depths, he leans in kiss James properly before making _his_ gratitude quite clear.


End file.
